T.H.E. SmartClassroom :: April 30, 2009

Spotlight

The overall academic performance of high school students in math and reading has remained basically flat over the last 35 years, but younger students have made some gains in both subjects, according to the latest long-term trend National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report, released this week. Further, the achievement gaps between some ethnic groups have narrowed in that period.
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Palm Springs Unified School District took its use of technology to a new level last month by opening an Assistive Technology Diagnostic Center that will serve as a local resource for students with cognitive, academic, and physical challenges. The new facility provides free assessments for local students who in the past were forced to travel two to three hours to receive such services.
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Ed Tech News

Panopto is adding native Mac recording to its lecture capture platform, CourseCast. The new tool, Macintosh Recorder, is currently in private beta and is expected to be released to subscribers of Socrates Premium Services, as well as hosted and corporate subscribers, in May.
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A massive 463 schools in New South Wales in Australia are going wireless. The move is part of Australia's Digital Education Revolution initiative and is being implemented through the New South Wales Department of Education and Training.
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Collaborative technology developer Zoho has released Zoho Mobile, an expanded version of the company's online application suite for mobile devices. Previously mobile support extended only to Apple's iPhone; now Blackberry, Google Android, and other mobile devices are also supported through a single common interface.
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The 2009 Win a Wireless Lab Sweepstakes from Discovery Education and CDW Government (CDW-G) will close this week. CDW-G said response to this year's contest has tripled last year's, with 645,000 entries received, according to the company.
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Not all students learn at the same pace, and this is certainly true in mathematics courses. In an effort to give struggling middle and high school students a real opportunity to get the most from their math education, Hotmath.com has launched Catchup Math, an online diagnostic and review service aimed at helping math students understand troubling concepts and attack their exercises with a comprehension and vigor equal to that of their classmates.
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In an effort to solve what it calls the two biggest problems with benchmark assessments on standardized tests, Renaissance Learning has introduced Star Standards testing platform. The package includes the Star Reading, Star Math, and Star Early Literacy adaptive tests, all currently in use, with additional items to test common core and state-specific standards.
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Textbook publisher Kendall Hunt has joined forces with online education publisher Learning.com to offer Aha!Math for Kendall Hunt, an online program designed to integrate digital learning content with KHP's existing elementary school math curricula.
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Whitepapers

In 2012, Naperville Community Unit School District 203 identified the need for a learning management system that was simple enough for kindergarteners, powerful enough for high school seniors, and flexible enough for every student in between.At the time, Naperville was using an LMS that hadn’t been updated in more than five years and its limitations were starting to hinder the progress of this technically innovative and highly-collaborative district. Stakeholders wanted a tool that was media rich, supported mobile usage, and better facilitated online collaboration among teachers and students.
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